Procedural Register in the Olivet Discourse 473 Septuagintal allusions” (52), appears to be a poetic transition passage, written in language taken directly from a large, familiar stock of eschatological material, which includes Isaiah 13,10 (LXX): kai; skotisqhvsetai tou' hJlivou ajnatevllonto", kai; hJ selhvnh ouj dwvsei to; fw'" aujth'". In Isaiah 13 the context is the day of the Lord coming with judgment against Babylon and the nations, as well as sinful humanity as a whole (13,11). I concur with Wright in seeing this language as symbolic, and conveying the message that what follows is of “earth- shattering” significance (53). I differ from Wright, France (54) and Hatina (55) in that I see in this section (vv. 24-27) a new temporal horizon in the speech, its only connection with the previous material being that it is God who ultimately drives the events depicted in both. The previous section, vv. 5b-23 is the rhetorical core of the speech. It contains the answer to the disciples’ question regarding the temple’s demise, delivered in a crescendo fashion of increasing immediacy and relevance until the final road sign is given by means of the attention- catching formula “when x then y” (vv. 14-23). In the colophon of v. 23, the Markan Jesus wraps up the procedural-paraenetic section, and, in contrast to those who might be deceived, concludes: “But as for you, watch out, for I have told you all things”. With this colophon, the Markan Jesus concludes his answer to the disciples’ question, and the subject of the temple’s destruction is now closed. Starting with v. 24, hearers of the speech cannot miss the change in setting. The immediacy, the urgency and direct relevance for “you” of the earlier section are gone. In fact, in contrast to the concreteness of “you”, as the object of most clauses in the previous section, the object of the Son of Man’s gathering are the elect “out of the four winds, from the end of the earth to the end of heaven (v. 27). A new act in the unfolding drama has begun, in which there is no longer a need to watch out. Further, there are no imperatives and no temporal references other than the double tovte of “and then they will see…” (v. 26) and “and then he will send his angels” (v. 27), which communicate indeterminacy in the future, in contrast to the specificity of the o{tan + second person plural imperatives or o{tan plus tovte of the previous section. Without (52) DYER, The Prophecy, 267. (53) N.T. WRIGHT, Jesus and the Victory of God. II: Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis, MN 1996) 362. (54) FRANCE, The Gospel, 530. (55) T.R. HATINA, “The Focus of Mark 13,24-27: The Parousia, or the Destruction of the Temple?”, BBR 6 (1996) 43-66.